


Dust of Eden

by Metz



Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 08:30:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 17,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Metz/pseuds/Metz
Summary: Wounded by a temporal missile, the 10th Doctor finds himself stranded on a planet under occupation by a hostile species.He is taken in by one of the resistance, a woman with secrets of her own, and dreams that may not be.Written in first person.OC fic can get a bad rap, but I'm really proud of this one. I think it feels a lot like an episode, and although the OC gets occasional notions, there is never any question of romance or sexual relationship.Please leave feedback if you like the story, it makes me happy :) Concrit also accepted, but these are 10 years old now.





	1. Prologue

_“Eve…” he says._

_The breeze catches his coat and the hair over his dark eyes. They are darker than the night that fell when he turned off the sun.  I keep my thoughts tight in my mind, behind the wall he built for me, but flashes of those desperate days rise at the sight of him._

_He hasn’t changed, but my hair is turning grey._

_“I want it to stop;” he whispers, “everything, all of it.”_

_I go to him and we sit on the edge of the lake in memory of long ago. The ground has mostly healed its scars, but it seems that he has not. I have not forgotten my promise; “I will be here.”_

_I wonder what has finally driven him to this._

_His tears run against my hand. “I’m sorry,” he says, as I stop brushing his skin and brush his mind instead.  “I’m so sorry.”_

_His soul is naked. How could I do anything but scream._


	2. Eve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve finds a lost traveller

We moved quickly through the city’s rubble, searching for more survivors. When we reached a body, I called them as living or dead. Sometimes; the dead ones were still breathing, but a knife in the right place was quick, finishing a job already started and beyond our capacity to repair. 

I was always the one who made the call. I was always the one who followed it through when necessary. I never allowed myself to wonder if I was wrong 

I used to cry over it, but I hadn’t cried over anything in a long time. If I didn’t end it out here, they died slowly, sometimes over the course of several days; screaming in agony because we hadn’t the tools, or the training, to keep them alive. That mercy alone justified my actions, though Gods knew, sometimes I wished there was another way.

Sometimes, but not this time, they weren’t even human. I had no sympathy for them. Then there was no call, just a silent despatch and a leaving to bleach in the heat. In the sterile remains of my once fertile world, it was too hot even for maggots.

The crashed ship was small, in the livery of a courier company, probably carrying black market drugs and a couple of desperate passengers on the run from wherever. Why else would they have risked flying through this sector? 

Aside from the two kids, we found no one on board that was even half alive. Mary had coaxed them, wide eyed and staring, from the arms of their dead parents. Secretly, I wished them well with the nightmares to come.

“Possible incoming,” said Grant, from my right, as he looked down at the make-do scanner in his hand.

“Range?” I asked.

“Twenty-five klicks,” he replied.

“We’ve got time,” I said. “Five minutes.”

Jay was less assured, edgy; his hand was on his blaster and his eyes scanned the sky. “Make it three.” 

“Five,” I said, firmly. I closed my eyes and focused on the whisper that drifted into my mind from the left. “You saw the trajectories, didn’t you? It was losing compartments as it fell. There’s more round here.”

There was a shout from nearby. Mary had found the remnants of the medical supplies box. The morphine vials were broken but the antibiotics were intact, at least. Grant busied himself salvaging parts from the downed ship. These other finds vindicated me and Jay didn’t like that. There were no more survivors though, at least not from the wrecked courier, but I drifted off, in search of whatever it was that was calling to me.

He was lying in a pool of his own blood, but he’d had the wit to crawl into the shade. He’d been here a while; his lips were cracked with the heat and the blood was mostly coagulated, except where it still oozed from the cuts on his face. I knelt to check for a pulse and found it so erratic I was about to conclude he was too far gone. His eyes snapped open for just a moment; dark eyes looked into mine and I saw pain in his face and felt it knocking on my mind. I haven’t got… a lot…of time…His words, not mine, inside my head. I blinked in surprise, sitting down heavily. He had initiated contact!

Oh Gods, he might have looked human but he sure as hell wasn’t; not if he could speak to me like that, not with that freaky pulse and skin that was cool even in the extreme heat. 

Not human… but still not one of them, and I was suddenly in a quandary. Cobalt wasn’t stupid. Cobalt would notice something like this and my duty was clear at that point - kill the stranger. But I’d given up hope of ever finding someone like me, especially in a hell-hole like this. A thousand possibilities flipped through my mind; all of them meaning I didn’t have to be alone in my head anymore, and most ending with being summarily executed.

And then he screamed, over and over, so loud I put my scarf over his mouth and resisted the temptation to slit his throat just to shut him up. There was no hiding it now. If he wasn’t dead by the time Jay came over; I was going to have to take him back.

“Eve,” said Jay, for a moment he was silhouetted against the sun and I couldn’t help but think that was a bloody stupid place to stand, “get a move on.”

“He’s got working lungs, at least,” I said. I looked down at the man beside me. He was about 20 centimetres taller than me, but he was slender; this was a good thing because otherwise I couldn’t have carried him. And carry him I had to, the whole three-K back to the tunnels. 

“You want a hand?” Grant asked as I rejoined the search party, the stranger draped half over my shoulder as I kicked his feet to keep him moving. I gave up and hoisted him all the way.

“You saying girls can’t carry?” I retorted. I doubted Grant would ever notice the strange heartbeat but I couldn’t take that chance. I had to be the one to haul the stranger the entire way back.

“You’re no girl,” Grant laughed, “girls have pigtails. You gonna find me someone cute, next time?”

“Are you feeling left out?” I smirked, happy to have one over on him. “I thought you had a queue?”

“There’s a queue,” Grant agreed, “but not everyone in it has tickets. You want one?”

“Sure,” I said. “What’s the resale value?”

 

Jay grumbled the whole way back. We didn’t normally take those who couldn’t stumble unaided, but the fact that Jay could still use his arm meant he’d never argue with my medical judgement. Medical? Blundering around with a text book and a sharp blade. I’m the closest thing they’ve got and I know who he’s fucking so he’d better not fuss too much. I felt the stranger’s blood drip down my back, forcing me to call a halt to our journey. We stopped for no longer than it took to wrap a bandage around the wound in his side, and wonder if this one really was save-able at all. 

The sky rumbled with thunder and a promise of impossible rain, and it masked the sound of their approach. We almost missed it; the small patrol, just the one jet, hovering as we crawled underneath rubble hoping we were invisible in our sand-stained clothes. I was suddenly awash in a sense of purpose not my own and I shouted to the others that I could hear something. Jay looked at me and I realised my ‘hearing them’ may have been one coincidence too many.

Truth be told, I was almost glad when the patrol appeared. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could have carried on in the heat and Jay certainly wasn’t going to slack off his pace because I was bringing in a dead man. Mary held the two children she’d found close and quiet, although they still cried. Jay was brooding over his blaster and I could see his mind working out how quickly he could have covered the ground to safety if he hadn’t had us with him. Grant was silently mouthing the words to a song in his head. My stranger; when did he become my stranger? I wondered, remained quiet, aside from the odd muffled moan and words that I didn’t understand. He looked at me briefly, and I pressed my fingers to his lips. 

Going… the wrong…way… His words in my head, again. I wondered how his other voice would sound.

“Shhhh,” I soothed.

The sound of the jet moved away, deeper into the ruins, and a collective sigh of relief broke the tension in the rubble. Grant threw his scanner into a corner and snorted in disgust, “Heap of junk.” He looked at me then, head slightly to one side, “Your hearing scares me sometimes,” he said. 

“Heh,” I replied, unnerved that he’d also noticed, “that's because I didn’t spend my college years in rock clubs.” I looked at my stranger. “You ready for another piggy back?” I asked. 

To my surprise, he smiled and jabbered something unintelligible as he collapsed onto me again.

“You don’t half pick them, Evie,” said Mary, as she escorted the children past.

“Yeah,” I said, as I lifted my charge onto my shoulders and followed.


	3. Out of the bread basket...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor wakes up.

For twenty-four hours he said nothing. No, strike that; he’d said a lot but none of it was intelligible. When I came back from the makeshift infirmary around midday he might have said ‘no no no’, but it wasn’t clear enough to tell. The rest of his mumblings sounded like a language, but not one I’d ever heard and, out here, I’d heard a few. There were images, of course, like excerpts from movies, playing through in his mind. Faces, places, creatures, and the planet spinning beneath us. Terrifying, painful memories. Whenever I tried to catch one, tried to find some clue as to whom he was, they fell away. Except the ones that quite vehemently insisted no aspirin and no cats.

He’d lost a lot of blood but I couldn’t risk transfusing him, so I’d been filling him with fluids to prevent shock. He was running a temperature of 40o C so there was no bloody way his skin should still feel so cool. He had an attack of the screams every four hours or so, and I’d come to realise it quieted him down if I wrapped my arms round him and thought calming thoughts. It also kept me from feeling so helpless.

That was how I came to cradle him in my arms and wipe sweat away from his forehead. This time felt different…this time there was shaking and fitting, and his temperature spiked at 45o C, his skin finally feeling warm against mine. I was all but convinced it was time to let this one go. A human would have been dead long before now. When the seizures stopped, I laid him back down and sat at the end of the bed watching him breathe. Wondering if it might not be better for both of us if he wasn’t, I lowered my head to my knees. 

“Hello.”

I looked up at the unexpected sound of a voice and I found him watching me.

“Hello there,” I said with a smile. I slid off the bed and returned to the more professional bedside chair. “Welcome back.”

“Where…?” he began, his voice cracking from dryness as I held a glass of water to his lips. I moved it away before he could drink too much, worried he might bring it back up. “Thank you. Where am I?”

“Safe,” I couldn’t help but feel that was a bit of a lie.

He looked at me, “Did I …” he touched his head and made a finger gesture I interpreted; correctly it seemed, as ‘think at you’.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Oh,” he looked contrite, “sorry, I don’t normally go around doing that. I just couldn’t quite make my mouth work. Never thought I’d have that problem. What did I say?”

I smiled reassuringly, “Nothing embarrassing.” 

“Good,” he said, “right, anyway thank you for everything, I really should be…” 

I put my hand on his chest to restrain him, but he restrained himself by collapsing back down onto the bed and screwing his face up in pain. “Ow….”

“You’re not going anywhere,” I said. I also had no intention of letting him wander out of there without an explanation.

He put his hand on his bandaged side. Only then did he seem to work out that he was largely naked under his sheet. He looked at me, “Um, did you…?”

I put on my most professional face, “someone had to.”

“Oh.”

“My name is Eve,” I said, “just so you know the name of the woman who undressed you.” And I was very good about it too, didn’t even peek. Not really. Professional… Ungh…A sudden image flashed into my mind, he’s standing behind me, his arms sliding round my waist and I feel a gentle kiss on my shoulder.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

I blinked. “Sorry.”

“I’m the Doctor.”

“Doctor…?”

“Just, the Doctor.”

This isn’t going to go down well, when Cobalt fixes me with that icy blue stare and asks what my stranger’s name is. “Oh,” I said.

“Is that going to be a problem? Sometimes it is you know. You could call me John Smith I suppose, but that’s not really my name, it would do, if it had to …It’s only a name though, not really important. Is it?”

I shook my head. He was cracked. “Not right now, no.”

“Could I …?” he motioned at the water and I handed him the glass. “Now;” he said, “no windows, ambient temperature below 10 degrees, no air conditioning, so we must be underground. Or in a cave system? No, those walls are brick. So, definitely underground. This would be sensible given how hot it is out there. So, where is there, Eve?”

“Thrace,” I answered.

“Thrace the place or Thrace the planet?”

I looked at him, puzzled, “Um… the planet Thrace in the Fortista sector.”

I saw I’d lost him for a moment when he closed his eyes and smiled dreamily. “The planet Thrace, ah. The ‘Picnic basket’ of the Empire. Vineyards, and cornfields, and scented blossoms that make spring smell like cointreau and …” his eyes opened again and he looked directly at me, animated, “no, wait a minute. It was what? Topping 40 out there? This can’t be right.”

I neglected to mention he was topping 40 in there, because I hadn’t heard that description of my home for a good five years. I looked at him like he was crazy. (Like? of course he was crazy.) 

“That was Thrace,” I told him, coldly. “Gods, I’d heard that they were keeping this hushed up but I never believed that no one would know. Picnic basket? Try frying pan.” 

“I’ve been…busy,” he confessed sadly, as if busy could possibly be an excuse for not knowing we’d been progressively abandoned. “Tell me what happened.”


	4. ..into the fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve explains.

“There’s a war,” I said, keeping my voice level. When he asked me which one, I told him there was no name for it. “There’s not even a name for our enemy. Not that I know of, anyway. We just call them Jars.”

I spat the word Jars. I had told this story before, knew how to keep my tone cool, but their name was always full of hate, despite my best efforts. 

“Jars?”

“They look like mould; a filthy, red and grey mould, growing inside a body of glass. So, Jars.”

“Ah,” he said, and followed that with a handful of syllables that must have been their proper name. I knew without a shadow of a doubt I’d never be able to pronounce the exotic contortion of vowels with quite the same ease that he did. I tried but failed. 

“Never mind,” he dismissed, “it’s just a name. They're lichen, by the way, not a mould. They extrude a silicate shell to move around in.”

“Can you at least pretend you give a shit about us?” I snapped. 

“Sorry,” he said, “I get distracted by facts. Carry on.”

I went back to my calm voice, although every so often, it became a little sad. “Five years ago they came here, wanting half our crop and a say in the running of the government. They had big guns, so the government agreed. Keep them sweet until the Human Empire could come and help us. 

“To begin with, they were civil enough, let the families with kids leave and head back to the Empire. Of course, I can only assume they didn’t let them go at all. But we were sure, totally sure, that the Empire would hear about this. Notice it was receiving less of our produce, and come help us. We even got to thinking it wasn’t so bad, ignored the fact that more and more of them seemed to be turning up every day with huge machines they ferried off to the other side of the planet. It’s funny what people will ignore.”

His eyes were deep and serious. “Yes,” he said, “until it’s too late.”

“There were disappearances. Whole farms, sometimes whole towns. Gone. Rumours of slaves, experiments, humans as food. There were patrols, and curfews, and communication restrictions. Travel between cities was limited. To protect us, they said. Grapes withered. Corn went un-harvested. Animals starved. 

“It took a field of dead animals to move us in the end, not a town of missing people. Low definition images, spread through the last of our broadcast network. So, we finally did something. 

“I say ‘we’ but I wasn’t even there. Not then.” 

In truth, the first thing I’d heard or thought of revolution was when the Jar shot my husband. I didn’t see the need to tell the Doctor that. 

He rested his chin on his hand and looked at me sadly as I continued.

My voice became more distant. “Five-hundred people mobbed the complex that rumour said was a concentration camp. It wasn’t. It was full to the brim with everything we’d made since the occupation began, just stuffed there, rotting. The Empire had to have known what was going on. They knew. They knew and were doing sweet fuck-all about it. The story goes that some bastard Jar was standing in the centre of the compound, laughing. 

“It started with that smug bastard and I can’t say I don’t think he deserved it. What happened next was a massacre. When the people swarmed the complex, the Jars turned their guns on them. Some hundred people made it out alive…” 

That was when I’d first known. When Ben’s brother had come running home, blood and sweat in his eyes. 

Now my words were a bitter whisper. “The Jars pursued them into every community.” 

I shook as I remembered. Screams as blood runs into the streets, broken bodies, broken bones, and broken skulls oozing onto the pavement. Terror. Hiding in barns and holes, and burnt out shops.

“I had always hoped that the Empire’d come and help us. I knew that night it was never going to happen. It was the last time night fell on Thrace.”

The Doctor looked at me. “Oh. They sabotaged the solar mirrors. Of course! Perpetual daylight! Well, they do come from a planet with three suns.”

He seemed so matter of fact about it, so impressed by his own reasoning that I wanted to give him a solid smack in the face.

“But why, Eve?” he asked, disarming me with his urgency, “Why? Surely the planet’s useless to them if it can’t produce anything.”

“Maybe they all want sun tans? Who cares?” I shrugged. “It’s not the food. It’s not the people. I gave up wondering why. It didn’t seem important. I've spent five years trying to stay alive. As long as they don’t see us, I think they pretend we’re not here. We scavenge what we can to survive but I’m not sure why the hell we bother.” 

“I can help you,” he said simply.

I smiled at his naiveté. “Everyone we find out there thinks that. Everyone who’s been hit by whatever it is the Jars fire into space that strands them on our little piece of hell.” I was annoyed at my sudden descent into negativity. Wasn’t it hope that had made me bring him back here in the first place? My own, personal hope that he was like me. 

“I can,” he insisted, grimly, “but I need to … need to get….” His eyes rolled back into his head, and he uttered a moan of pain. 

Yeah. He’s smart. He knows about the Jars. And he’s … probably dying of something I have no idea how to fix.

“Eve,” he gasped, “Eve you have to find the….” He was breathing hard, and I knew what was coming next, as he started to shake violently. “Can’t…. I …. Time… ”

“Shhh,” I said, gently, “it’s okay.” 

What am I on about? Okay? It most definitely was not okay. Not okay because he’d curled up in a ball, shaking like a man possessed by demons, spitting words that made no sense in that impenetrable language of his. 

It wasn’t okay because I’d suddenly reiterated the helplessness of our situation. Soothing the Doctor was like soothing Ben, and I’d seen Ben die again and again. Suddenly I was wondering what the hell the point was. 

The Doctor’s eyes locked with mine, and he was begging me with them; begging for something I had no idea how to give him. 

“Time…Missiles,” he said.

“What?” I asked, before I could stop myself. 

“Must be using…damaged my capacity to regenerate....illegal. Illegal since… no, no, no. Not now, I can’t think about that, not now.” His words gave way to sobs of pain. 

I pressed my hands to my head. I didn’t think I could bear to listen and I got up to run, finding that somehow he’d caught me feebly by the wrist and was whispering in my head … Don’t leave me… alone… 

Him asking that was all well and good because; he was too far gone to see the muscles spasm in his body, to feel the nails drive into his palm so hard they bled, to watch anguish contort his face. He was too far gone to wonder why, why this time the word he was saying over and over again was somehow translated in my head as sorry.


	5. Dreams, memories and imagination.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve remembers, and the Doctor has bad news.

I wasn’t aware when I fell asleep, but I knew I was dreaming.  _The Doctor’s eyes locked on mine and he drew me against him.  As he drew me onto him, we began to move together._ Without warning that image fled, the heat of that moment fading into a more familiar dream. I knew how this one ended and I was begging myself to wake up before it could reach the place with the billion screams. 

  _I run through the red grass feeling the brush of seeds against my hand, but there is nowhere to run. Nowhere is safe because a storm is coming._

_The burnt orange sky turns black with smoke and the world smells of blood. Pain shoots through my chest, but leaves me still aware._

_I can’t breathe, but I’m still aware._

_I beg for it to end as fire burns the skin from my flesh and the flesh from my bones and I am still aware._

_I become a thousand splinters of loss, dead…and I am still aware. _

_There are screams in the darkness around me and I can never tell if my voice is one of them._

 I awoke suddenly, the last twenty-four hours coming back in a rush. That dream had started the headache that always followed. It had sparked a horrible, irrational despair, so I screwed my eyes shut and tried to will it away.  It was just a dream, but I had seen what the reality of my feelings had done to my family; to the people I had loved. I felt tears on my face and I wiped them away. This dream wasn’t one I shared any more.  

 That was when I realised that the Doctor was standing by the bed with a concerned look in his eyes.

“Are you okay?” he inquired. 

“Just a dream,” I gave the old, familiar lie. “What are you doing up?”    

“Keeping an eye on you.”    

“You seem to have misinterpreted this relationship,” I said. “Really, you shouldn’t be up.”    

“Who’s the Doctor here?” he asked, raising his eyebrows.  “You looked like you needed sleep.”     

I conceded the point. “You found some clothes, then?”    

He looked down at the crumpled linen trousers and the black nehru jacket. “Yes,” he said and I couldn’t tell if he objected to them or not.   He looked at himself in the mirror and fingered the stiff collar.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Good,” he replied, “yes. Good. Fine. Never better. Just a spot of temporal instability. Time missiles. Nasty things.”

 I’d deceived the dying often enough to recognise this for what it was. “You’re not okay at all, are you?”

 “I’m fine. Really.” he said. Then, after a moment’s pause, “No. Pretty completely not okay, to tell the truth.”

 _Fuck! Damn! Shit! “Is there something we can do?”_   

“I can’t lie to you,” he answered, “I’ve managed to increase the time between the episodes, but that only means that when they come they will be…somewhat more intense.”

 _More_ intense? 

He saw my expression and smiled encouragingly, “I’m tougher than I look,” he said.  “If I can get to my ship, then with a spot of luck and some genius, and I have both by the way, I’ll be able to fix this.” He pointed at himself but added a qualifier, “If the old girl didn’t take too much of a battering that is.”

I believed him, _what do I know about alien physiology? Brayer’s almanac of sentient species didn’t include humanoids with two hearts,_  but there was a flaw in his plan.  “There wasn’t a ship anywhere near where we found you.”

“It wouldn’t have looked like a ship. It would have looked like a large, blue, wooden box,” he gestured with his hands.

I shook my head, “What kind of ship is that? I’ve seen lots of things drop out of the sky but nothing like that. Some kind of escape pod?”

“Er,” he stuttered, “you could look at it that way.”  He closed his eyes and for a moment and I thought he was going to fit again. Instead, he just looked sad. “I’m more than a little worried that I can’t hear her. Still, she's probably just in maintenance mode and keeping her head down.”  

“Hear her?” Then, I put two and two together and thought I’d gotten five. “You have a telepathic ship.”

He grinned, “I should introduce you.”

“Thanks,” I said dryly, not sure if I meant it. 

_His fingers link with mine and he traces patterns on my skin with his thumb. I turn to face him; his lips brush my cheek as his free hand runs slowly down my arm. His fingers are cool._

I slammed shut the doors in my head with embarrassment, anxious to stop these sudden images. I hadn't thought of him like that until the first image had insinuated its way into my head, and now whenever he looked at me I had to struggle to ignore it. I’d not made a point of celibacy over the last couple of years but it had always been about company, not lust. Wanting just opened the door to loss.  

I got off the bed and headed to the door. “I’ll go find some food. You hungry?”

“Knew there was something,” he said distractedly. A faint flicker of unidentified emotion crossed his face and he looked suddenly very tired.  

“You stay right here,” I ordered, “there are far too many questions likely to be asked if you’re up and wandering around with me.”    

“Can you pick me up some parts?” he asked, “If you happen to cross paths with any, that is.”

“Any particular type of parts?”

“Oh, anything. Fragments of (that unpronounceable, almost unthinkable name again) missiles, transceiver equipment, bits of wire and a six inch iron nail. Has to be iron, though.”   

“Six inch?” It’s obviously a measurement but I had no idea what size he meant.   

He gestured. I nodded my understanding. I knew what the Doctor meant and, although our scavengers hated to part with anything, I could get what he needed.  This, frankly, was the first time I’d been able to say that.  As to fragments of missile, the Jars fired them into the sky so frequently the bits came down with whatever they’d caught in their wake. 

Walking down the passageway from my room, I wondered exactly how I was supposed to pull fragments of missile from under Cobalt’s nose.  Cobalt didn’t insist on much, but he kept every tiny scrap of those missiles locked away in his office, not letting anyone near them. Grant asked once; and wouldn’t tell anyone Cobalt’s reply, except to suggest that the price for indulging his curiosity was one not worth paying.

Unless… I bore left, taking the route to the sorting room. Everything ended up there and my growing headache told me there were things I needed, as well. I wasn’t sure that getting caught with those wouldn’t be just as bad as getting caught with my hand in Cobalt’s stash of alien technology.

 


	6. Salvage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An encounter with Cobalt

_Oh, Gods._

I’d been through every medical cache from the previous four weeks and there weren’t any. And fragments of missile? Not one of those in sight, either. So; I had a pocket full of six-inch nails, copper wire and some fuses, but not a lot else. I found myself standing; Jay watching me with suspicion, up to my elbows in one of the general boxes, dumping things onto the table with desperation.

I swore if he could growl like a dog he would have. I wondered for a moment if Cobalt liked to keep him on a leash.

“What are you doing, Evie?” he asked.

“Looking for stuff.”

“Oh?”

I scowled. “Medical salvage. Med-i-cal. You know? That thing I do.”

“That’s not the medical salvage box.”

“Things get mixed up,” I said, as my fingers caught on the jagged edge of a missile fragment. I winced as I pulled it out. “It’s not like we don’t need every last scrap.” Some of us, more than others.

Jay looked at me as I sucked at my finger. He stepped closer and took the shard of metal out of my hand. “Well,” he said, “that’s not medical.”

I was sure he was going to call me out on my true intentions and I searched my head for any words I could force past my lips that wouldn’t turn to gibberish; or the truth. That was when Grant sauntered up behind me and slipped his arms round my waist.

“Honey,” he said, “if you needed contraceptives you only needed to ask. You dark horse, you.”

Saved. Although the assumption made me feel awkward and I blushed, I told myself that people thinking I was having sex with my stranger was better than the truth; I'm trying to go against Cobalt's orders, and I'm trying to find the drugs that keep me sane.

I wriggled round in Grant’s embrace until I was facing him. He was beaming like he’d worked out the secret of the universe as he fished something out of his back pocket and tapped it on my nose. I snatched it out of his hand and rapidly slid it into my pocket, fully intending to drop the packet into the nearest random box as soon as the opportunity arose. I then dug him in the ribs until he let me go.

“If you need more of anything,” Grant winked, “you know where I am.” He kissed me on the cheek, and started packing up the box I’d been going through.

Jay was still scowling. “Anyway,” he said, disdainfully, “Cobalt’s looking for you.”

Not saved, then. “Me?”

“He has some questions.”

 _Shit. I’m going to have to lie to Cobalt’s face,_ “Oh, okay. I’ll be off…”

“And I do mean anything,” Grant shouted cheerfully. I stuck two fingers up at him, equally cheerful, over my shoulder as I left.

I forced myself to walk calmly to Cobalt’s door. He was the man who had found a pathetic group of survivors on the edge of collapse, and given us a strong leader to follow. He was the man who taught me how to kill quickly and without pain. He was the man who had kept us alive for three years and he terrified me. For some bloody reason the new cut on my finger hurt more than it had any damn reason to and I contemplated declaring myself insane to wash my hands of the whole thing. I was trying to think of a good reason why my report on the rescue hadn’t been completed yet, but by the time I reached Cobalt’s office the only words I could think of were; “Dunno,” “Wheeee,” and “Ducks.” By the time he called to me to enter, I was down to none.

Cobalt was sitting in an old swivel chair that had once belonged to the shipping company that formerly owned this place. The desk had seen better days, from what I could see of it under the map of the city attached with surgical tape, pots of soil, and in one corner, chewing gum. Cobalt was wearing that black uniform again, the one I figured must be self cleaning because it was never dirty and he wore it all the time. He was looking at the broad, brown leather device on his wrist with some consternation, finally looking up at me with piercing blue eyes and a tight lipped smile. It developed into a disarming grin but the coldness in his eyes, despite his ridiculous good looks, genetically modified if anyone EVER was, just made me feel uneasy.

“Evie,” he said.

I hate being called Evie. “You wanted to see me?”

“Yes,” he confirmed. “What do you make of this?”

That was so much what I wasn’t expecting that I couldn’t think. “Um?”

He handed me a circuit board.

“It’s a circuit board?” I said and handed it back. “Really, Grant’s the technical guy.”

“I didn’t ask what it was,” he said sternly. There was not even a hint of friendliness. “I asked what you thought of it.” He put it back into my hands. “Now take your time.”

I took it back to try and give myself time enough to work out what was going on. It’s a circuit board. Nothing but a bloody circuit board.

Annoyance gave me courage and my mental state stopped me from thinking better of it, “What is this about.”

“Tell me,” he said, fixing me in his gaze, “what you think of it.”

“Nothing.”

At this he smiled, “Very good. How about this one?”

All right, I’ll play this game. He handed me something else which was in my hands for about three seconds before my knees gave out. Suddenly, I was on all fours, gasping for breath, the world spiralling around me. I threw the board away and dry heaved, looking up at Cobalt. _When I can move I’m going to rip your bloody throat out_ , I thought.

“Easy there,” Cobalt said, helping me up and sitting me in another battered chair. He handed me something to drink that smelled suspiciously like rocket fuel. “I really wasn’t expecting the reaction to be quite that strong.” Cobalt grinned again and I was sure he was not at all sorry. I looked down into the drink. He tipped my chin up and looked at me. “So, now I know.”

“Know what?”

“I know what you are.”

“What? Pissed off?”

“Eve,” he said, and from out of his pocket he produced a strip of light blue tablets. He held them up in front of me. “These were almost enough to prove it, but there’s enough ‘normal’ medical uses for FXHT to give me cause for doubt.”

_Oh, Gods. He knows._

“Add to that your knack for finding people and your obvious time sensitivity…” he gestured at the circuit board, “and the occasional report of 'Eve seemed to know exactly what I was thinking'.”

 _Oh. Shit shit shit_. And now he’s mentioned it, that burning in my finger from that fragment, that circuit board, the Doctor, they’re all alike somehow.

His expression softened a little, and I realised I must have looked terrified, if I was not actually shaking.

“It’s okay,” he said with what seemed to be empathy, “I know why you keep it quiet. I’m not going to hurt you. In fact, under different circumstances, I’d like to do quite the opposite. See?”

Cobalt pressed my fingertips to the side of his head, and for the first time I wondered if there wasn’t actually something genuine in him. I skirted the edge of his thought processes and decided I didn’t really want to go any further. Against my better judgement, I smiled.

“That’s better,” he said. “Now, let’s talk about how you can help me.”


	7. Splinters

There was still a minuscule splinter stuck in my finger. I tried to get it out while I stood outside my door, but the light was awful and it hurt too much to keep poking at it.  Five minutes I’d been standing there, trying to stop myself from throwing up for reasons only partly connected to that damn circuit board.  Inside, the Doctor was singing to himself and, by the sound of it, dragging things around the room. It was that which finally, nausea put aside, made me slip the key into the lock and step inside.

He was sitting in the middle of the floor, having moved both bed and table away from the wall, and pulled a good three metres of cabling out of somewhere.  He was fiddling with something in his lap that looked a lot like one of the three broken bar fires that even Grant couldn’t find a use for and had stashed under the bed- just until I clear the workshop out- last year. He was also wearing the pair of glasses I’d found in his pocket.

“Eve!” he exclaimed as if he hadn’t seen me for weeks when I knew it couldn’t have been more than an hour.  “Wondered where you’d got to.”

“Uh,” I mumbled, “got you some stuff.”

I emptied out my pockets, Grant's 'present' excluded, and the Doctor _ooh’d_ and _no’d_ and _tutted_ over the assorted rubbish, throwing most of it over his shoulder into a steadily growing pile of components.  He got quite excited by a ‘relative voltage trans-ioniser’, which I ignored in favour of sitting at the table with a loaf of bread and the may-or-may-not-just-be-off-milk cheese that Mary knocked up in the kitchen. I’d had to risk her motherly enquiries to get it, and had left the kitchen squirming like a fifteen year old. “I hope you’re being careful,” she’d said.  I assured her I was, despite having nothing to be careful with, apart from Grant’s apparent interest in my sex life.

It didn’t help that when the Doctor looked up at me with a crazy grin, another one of those fantasies leapt into my head.  _He lies beside me, his lips on my throat, kissing there. His fingers drift along my inner thigh. His hearts beat against my hand as I rest it on his chest_.

“Oh, just stop it,” I said out loud. The Doctor looked puzzled. “Not you,” I said quickly.

“Did you find any bits of missile?” he asked.

“Sort of,” I answered. I decided I wasn’t hungry any more.  “Cobalt, he’s the boss round here, collects it all.”

“Ah,” he said, “I could really do with something that’s been exposed to a time distortion. Never mind.” 

“Never mind?”

“No. Something will crop up. Usually does. Did you just say your boss collects bits of Time Missile?” 

“Um, yes.” _Shut up, Eve. Shut up. Think of the pills and shut up._    

“What does he do with them? Hang them on his walls? Make modern sculptures? What?”

“Is it relevant?” I asked, suddenly very tired again.

“I dunno,” said the Doctor, abandoning his centre-of-the-room project to sit at the table and poke the cheese before licking it. He pulled a face and put it back down.  “You can never tell. Buuuuuuut,” he looked at me again, “but it’s a rather strange hobby, don’t you think? Collecting bits of missile that no human on this planet should have the slightest understanding of?”

“Maybe he’s curious. Did you just lick that cheese and put it back on the plate?”

 He looked guilty, “Don’t change the subject.”

“Who licks cheese? I mean. Honestly!  And why the spontaneous furniture movement?”

“I mean they’re just bits of metal, really. Metal and complex magnetised plastics with a polycarbonate core. Nothing special about them unless…” He stopped, suddenly looking stern. 

I carried on, oblivious. “It’s not like this place can tolerate much re-arrangement. It’s a pretty small room as it is.”

“Eve,” he said, but I carried on ranting until he caught my chin with the tips of his fingers and the suddenness of that touch stopped me dead.

 _In the half light, he looks down at me, wet hair clinging to his forehead, one hand against my cheek._  

“Eve,” he said, again. He was on his feet, looking at me intently.  “Is there something ‘different’ about him? Distinguishing marks?  Does he have any unusual technology? Where does he come from?”

I shook my head to try and clear that image from it. “Um…. I dunno, yes, no, all of the above? I don’t know.”

The Doctor paused in his interrogation, “Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I said, “look I’m just a bit… edgy, that’s all. Happens sometimes.” _Yeah, when I’m coming off the suppressants and there’s an alien building Gods know what in my room. Edgy doesn’t really cut it._

He nodded, “Thing is, Eve, I need to know where my ship is.  A bit of one of those missiles will help me find out. And much as I’d rather NOT think about it, I need to find my ship because of what will happen if I don’t.”

“You’ll never get a bit from him,” I said, “which means we either go find one outside or …” I looked at my finger, “how big a bit do you need?”

“Tiny,” he said, “tiny, tiny. Just enough to set up a sensitivity field. Microns, even.”

“Splinter sized?”

“More than enough.”

I held out my hand. “If you can get it out, you’re welcome to it.” I said.

He took my hand in his and inspected the cut, “Ooo, look at that, you can see the immune reaction. Bet that hurts. Hold still.”

He found a needle from somewhere, and with a speed and gentleness any parent would envy, he located and removed the offending shard. He proceeded to wipe off my finger, clean it with water, find a plaster and pronounce it all done.  He grinned and I smiled, then he headed back down to his pile of stuff, balancing the tiny speck on his finger as he worked.

I remembered:   Cobalt shows me the all but complete time missile. He seems quite proud of it, “This will bring this war to an end,” he says.  “I lost everything when my ship crashed. Everything that could end what's happening here.  All I had to do was keep as many of you alive as I could, and wait until I could build a replacement. 

 “I'm so close now, I can do what I came here to do, and go home to see my family again. But I can’t finish it until I’ve located that new time source, the one from two days ago. I believe you’re the one who can do that, but I need your skills at their top level, not locked up by these.” He waves the blue pills at me.  “So once this is over they’re all yours but until then, I’m sorry.”

 Cobalt was lying of course, but somehow his mind was too well guarded to tell about what.


	8. Temporal instability

“Ah ha!” the Doctor said, “Finished.” He held up his creation, grinned for a moment before he became serious again.  He plugged it into the wall and listened intently, caressing the circuits as a low hum built from within.  It’s a hum that somehow reached my belly and my head, and I closed my eyes, giddy.

“Doctor,” I stepped back and sat heavily on the edge of the bed. The pitch rose and he ignored me, still fiddling and tinkering. “Doctor, I…”

It was inside my head now; an unsettling, discordant singing that somehow managed to throb at the same time. I scrabbled with my thoughts, trying to shut out the sound.  It wasn’t painful, it wasn’t wrong. It was just too much. In desperation I reached out and pulled the power cord from the array and looked back at him. The device fell silent and he glared at me.  His eyes demanded an explanation.

_His mouth presses against mine, his tongue dances around my lips as he pulls me against him, his fingers in my hair._

I put my head in my hands and swept them back to clear my hair from my eyes. “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m sorry it was just the noise….”

“I need that…what did you say?”

“That noise, the noise it was making.”    

He scrutinised my face for a moment, and I wondered if I’d turned blue or something, so puzzled was his expression. “Describe it,” he said.

I struggled to find words for it. I settled on the kind of harmony that sends a shiver down your spine… only this one’s slightly off…

“Ah,” he said, “well I suppose it had been in contact with your DNA so some kind of resonance isn’t completely unexpected, still…”

I never got to hear his answer because he dropped to his knees, his back arched as he clutched at the table for support. Without thinking, I was on my own knees next to him, trying to help him onto the bed. His body was so rigid I finally gave up.

He was right. He was well overdue another episode and this one was much more intense.. His memories bled out. He was fighting so hard to hold it together his thoughts were running rampant, and he relived every moment. Pain burning in the darkness, a world turned to black; such hate and all for nothing, they survived; such loneliness I am the last, even he is dead. When he screamed, I reached out physically and mentally to try and ease the pain, but unlike before he recoiled from both touches. “No, Eve. Stay back.” 

I pulled away, rejected and helpless, and watched the memories rip through his mind. They shattered whatever he was doing to hold back the damage the missiles had done, and he couldn’t fight both them and the pain. Black mottled patterns fluctuated  underneath his skin, following the lines of nerves and veins. 

'Temporal instability'.  I knew what the words meant but I didn’t understand the sense of them.  

_Screw it._

I sat beside him and changed the water soaked towels I was using to stop him from burning up. I moved the scraps and fragments and the machine so he couldn’t harm them or himself. I laid a blanket beneath his head so he wouldn’t brain himself on the concrete floor.  By the end of the hour there was blood smeared down his face where it had leaked from his ears. He’d skinned his fingers against the table leg, and he was so weak he could barely move. I helped him crawl to the bed and there at least he fell asleep.

I turned out the light, hours of darkness that Cobalt forced on us as an illusion of night. I usually welcomed it, a chance to sleep and reinforce my natural human routines.  This time, I sat with my arms wrapped round myself. I couldn’t sleep, and without the drug my head was increasingly full of echoes and anxiety. In the absence of light, there was nothing to keep me from thinking. Nothing to keep the reawakened images from my mind. I considered turning the light back on, but I was ashamed to be afraid of the dark. 

_Ben falls to the ground, a sickening noise as bones break on the curb. Blood spreads out on the ground beneath him._

_Twin suns burn over a silver forest and the sky is bright with death._

I tried to find a happier memory; the comfort of Ben’s smile, the ducks that turned up in the middle of the wedding ceremony, but thinking of Ben led me back to where I did not want to be.

_Broken bones and broken skulls ooze blood onto the pavement. Ben, fitting and twitching on my lap while I try and hold his brains in, while all around me there's gunfire and smoke and screaming._

I dragged myself to the present by listening.

Beyond the walls, there was the murmur of voices. Beyond the voices, I could feel them, I wish I didn't, I wish it was silent, all the people on the edge of my consciousness. Jay beating his fist into a wall; Grant, loosing himself in someone else’s body; Mary crying for the children she lost and can't replace no matter how many she takes under her wing. Anger/joy/loss and the hundred other emotions that surged and screamed unwanted in my head. But for all I didn’t want them, at least they were not memories.

Further away, further out, the grey wash of purpose and function that was the Jars, and just the faintest whisper of something else. Something else that was also alone.

 _Time/hope/found/joy_ as it found my mind, then _hide/conceal/protect/need/gone_ , almost as if I’d been mistaken for someone else.

_You have a telepathic ship._

 I tried to catch it but it had gone silent. 


	9. Quiet betrayals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cobalt manipulates Eve

I was dragged out of something almost sleep by the sound of footsteps, followed by a banging on my door. It was Jay and he was angry about something.

I got to my feet and crossed the room in darkness, opening the door enough to look angrily round the edge. “What?” 

“Cobalt wants to see you.” 

“It's the middle of the fucking night.” 

“Do I look like I care?” 

 _He probably kicked you out of bed to run errands for him_ , I thought to myself. Jay was peering into the room over my shoulder. “Looking for something? Wait here while put my boots on.”

To Jay's annoyance I closed the door in his face; slightly panicked he might have seen the contraption in the light from the corridor. I rubbed my eyes; half laced my boots and pocketed the door key. Jay was not impressed when I locked the room behind me. _Sorry, Doctor, but I can't have people wandering in_.

 “Something to hide?”

 “He has flashbacks,” I explained.  “He gets lost in them. I don't want him wandering around.”

 “Hmmm,” was all Jay said, and fell silent for the rest of the walk to Cobalt's office.

 I took a certain satisfaction in the fact that even Jay had to knock to get inside. I’ll bet that pisses you off, I thought. Being his trusted Lieutenant and everything.

 “Sit,” said Cobalt, once we were inside. He turned to Jay, “You can go.”

 I sat. “What can do for you?”

 “To the point, I like that.”

 “Then get to it, please.”

 Jay was still standing by the door.  “I said, you can go,” Cobalt repeated. “Don't make me say it again.”

 Jay left, closing the door behind him. The action made me uncomfortable, because there was nothing between me and whatever Cobalt wanted.

 “I want you to find the time source. Now.”

 “I can't ... control it like that.”

 “It's quiet. Most people are asleep. No thoughts to distract you.”

 “Really, I...”

 “Information has come into my possession that makes it imperative that you do this now.”

 “What information?”

  Cobalt sighed and sat down in front of me, “I have to finish this war, Eve, before they do.”

 I looked over at the missile and back at him with fear stealing through my guts, “They're going to wipe us out, aren't they?”

 Cobalt nodded, “So please, Eve, I'm trusting you to do this for me, and I'm trusting you to keep this quiet.”

 Something is very, very wrong here. But my head was so screwed up by my own thoughts and everything else. I wasn’t even sure I was feeling it right. I couldn’t be sure of anything.

 “All right,” I said finally, “I'll try.”

 I closed my eyes and tried to let my mind drift. It went against everything I’d ever tried to do, which was keeping this thing in my head locked away and silent.  Deliberately pushing; going beyond what I could see, forcing it. It felt wrong. It scared me and it hurt me.

 She wasn’t looking for me to find her, and the whisper was just that; directionless and distant.  Splitting pain started behind my eyes, spreading through my head and into my spine. Cobalt was pulling me to my feet and I shook my head in confusion as he stood me in front of the map. “Find it, Eve. Show me.”

  _Confusion/pain/loss/time/fear/no!_

 I dragged my fingers through my hair in frustration and pain, “I can't. I have to stop.”

“We're here,” he said, pressing my hand into the centre of the map, “where is it?”

 I tried to move away from the map, but Cobalt stood behind me, trapping me.  My legs gave out and I almost caught my chin on the table but he dragged me back up, pinning me in place with his body and trying to move my hand. “You have to do this Eve.”

  _Loneliness/fear/silence/south/defend/time/no!_

 “Where is it, Eve!”

 _Gods this hurts!_ It hurt in a way I had no words for. I realised I was screaming through Cobalt's fingers.

_Twin suns burn over a silver forest and the sky is bright with death._

 “She doesn't want me to!” I ripped the map from the desk, sending glass pots crashing to the floor.

 Cobalt let me go and I slumped to the floor, breathing hard and shaking.

 “Doesn't _she_?” asks Cobalt coldly, and I realised how much I had given away. “Well, it's a bit late for that.”

 I looked up, not understanding and unable to form words. 

He activated something on his wrist and played back, in grainy 3D, the last 30 seconds.  I was clearly covering a point on the map, and every time he tried to move my hand, I just covered it more forcefully. 

“Thank you,” he said and brushed my cheek, “you've just saved your life.” He got up; reached into the pocket of his uniform to retrieve the pills, then pressed the packet into my hand.  “I really am sorry it had to hurt you so much,” he said.

For a second, I almost believed him. Then he walked out of the door, locking it behind him.

I curled into a ball and cried.


	10. The time missile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eve reveals the truth, and Cobalt is indirectly revealed

I lay on the floor for what seemed like forever, or maybe it was just moments. I stared at, but didn’t really see, the soil that had spilled out of the shattered pots. I knew I had to get back to my room and work out what exactly it was I'd just done, but I couldn’t find the energy to move. 

 _Get up, I tell myself. Get up, Eve_.

 Thoughts were swimming round in my head. I shouldn't have done that. It shouldn't be like this. _What if Cobalt damages the Doctor's ship? Have I just sentenced him to death? Well that's typical isn't it? As if I don't already have enough blood on my hands_.

_I sit across his lap, burying him inside myself. I lean back into his hands as his lips trace a line from my mouth to my belly._

_Nowhere is safe because a storm is coming._

 “Get the fuck up,” I said to myself, banging my palm into the side of my head. _You can't do anything lying here._

The headache, still nauseating, was just this side of bearable. I dragged myself to my feet through a wave of dizziness.  I stumbled to the door, but whereas my door had an ordinary lock, this had a fancy electronic thing and I hadn’t a clue what to do with it. I kicked the door in frustration, and then leaned back against it looking at the room.

It occurred to me that I’d been presented with an ideal opportunity to explore Cobalt's office.  He’d locked me in here, I thought to myself. That's enough of a justification. Did he really think I was going to lie here and wait for him to come back? In the back of my mind I realised he probably did, and it gave me a tiny bit of strength. Enough strength to locate the pills and stick them in my pocket.

I'd made it three steps when I heard the door being unlocked.

Shit. Torn between nonchalance and self preservation, I grabbed the nearest heavy object and stepped back against the wall. When the door opened I swung, pulling up centimetres from cracking a random piece of metal over the Doctor's skull.

I dropped the bar on the floor and breathed hard.

“Oh, hello,” he said brightly, “I never could stand being on the wrong side of a locked door.”

“What,” I asked eventually, “are you doing here?”

“Well,” he began, then caught sight of the half covered missile, “what is that doing here?”  He crossed the room in several long strides, and pulled the cover off of it, peering intently.  “You said he collected bits. You didn't mention he was building a functional one.”

Relief turned to worry and I clenched my fists at my sides. I followed him though, standing on the opposite side of the missile and trying to look intelligent. That close, the device turned my stomach, so I stepped back a little.

 “What does he look like?”

 “Cobalt? You asked me this before.”

 “You didn't answer me.”

 I described him as best as I could, and mentioned the wrist strap.

 “The missiles must have rendered his vortex manipulator useless,” the Doctor muttered to himself before looking directly at me. “This is going to sound a little strange, but it is vitally important you never let us meet. Vitally.”

 “Fine. Never let you meet. How exactly?”

 The Doctor ignored my question and trailed his hand over the missile casing before opening it and looking inside. I wrapped my arms round myself and stared blankly while the Doctor poked around with a growing disgust. “This is powerful enough to take a planet apart,” he concluded with a horrified look on his face. “Literally, pull it apart at a quantum level. It's advanced, very advanced. It's obscene.”

  _Powerful enough to take..._ “Maybe, it's for use against them.”

 “Do you really believe that?” the Doctor asked and glanced upwards.

  _We've been helping him. I've been helping him._ “No. I...” I started to feel sick from the realisation.

 “What are you playing at, Jack?” the Doctor asks himself.

 “Doctor,” I began, but he wasn’t listening and I thought maybe I only imagined calling to him.

 “Well, not Jack, not yet. And I don't suppose you're playing, either.”

 “Doctor.” _I have done a wrong thing. I have to tell you. I don't know how. I don't want you to hate me._

 “Well, neither am I.”

 He reached inside and pulled something out, throwing it onto the floor and grinding it under his foot.

Almost as an afterthought he noticed the dirt on the floor. He stooped down for a moment, tasting the spilt soil. For a moment he looked distant, then he took in the broken pots, torn map, and eventually, the look on my face. 

“What happened?! 

“I found your ship,” I confessed quietly, “I found it for him. I'm sorry.” 

“For him...” 

I looked away, desperate not to see the rage I knew was in his eyes, even as I felt it threaten to overwhelm me. I forced up a mental barrier against his emotion but I was still shaking with guilt. “I didn't know. I didn’t know what he was doing.”

 “You knew what the separation is doing to me. You knew that.”

 I wanted to tell him not to blame me; that Cobalt forced me, that I had never wanted this in the first place, but it just felt like an excuse for the inexcusable. I realised I only believed the Doctor could help us, the moment I had screwed up the thing he needed to do so.  So I said nothing, just stood against the wall as the Doctor walked out of the door.


	11. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We learn what is going on with the Jars and Eve.

It took me a few moments to gather my thoughts and follow him, by which time the Doctor was out of sight. I didn’t have a clue what to do but I couldn’t leave him to wander around. We were already in enough trouble and he was the only other person who had any idea what was going on. 

It’s not like he could get far.

When I found him, he was sitting at the table as I walked into my room. He looked up as I closed the door with my foot and I waited for some kind of telling off. 

“There're some very strange things about this planet,” he said. “Not least of all, you.” 

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, walking past him and slumping on the edge of the bed.

“Oh,” he said, “I didn't mean...”

“Yes,” I replied, “you did.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirty... ish.” 

“Were you born here?”

“I could operate a planter before I could read.”

He smiled, “Thracian pride still in place, then?”

“Not really, I preferred reading.”

“Were you born entirely... naturally?”

“My mother was my mother, my father was my father, and I was never anywhere near a test tube, if that's what you're asking. Believe me; I've hoped I was adopted since I was six. It would have made a lot of things make more sense.” 

“Any spatial-temporal rifts on the family farm?”

“Where is this going?”

“I don't know yet,” he said. “I need to see what they are up to. Where's their nearest base?”

I laughed, “It's twenty-five kilometres beyond the city boundary. There's no transport, and we'd be dead trying it on foot; from the sun or the patrols.”

“Do you think you could get me to my ship?” he asked.

I looked at him, “Cobalt's already gone after it. He’s probably halfway back here, by now.”

“He won't be able to do anything with her, and particularly not if he's gone on foot.”

“Yes. I could get you there.”

He stood up, wincing, and putting his hand to his side. I was halfway to my feet to check the injury (it's been what? Three days? He's probably ripped the stitches out) but he waved me away.

“Time,” he said suddenly, “time, time, time. It's all about time. Time Missiles, Time Agents, temporal instability, time sensitivity.”

“Time,” I said, “as in we don't have a lot of it. Cobalt's going to be back soon; you really don’t want to be here when he finds out whatever you did to his missile.”

I laced my boots tight and dragged my pack from under the bed, “We'll need water. Fill these.”

I handed him the bottles and busied myself finding a spare shemagh for him. When I turned round he was still standing there with the empty bottles in his hands. I tipped my head on one side, “you really don't respond well to instructions, do you?”

“Can you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

“Shh, listen.”

I listened until just on the edge of my hearing there was a low hum... more a sensation than a sound.

“What is it?”

“I have no idea,” he said then grinned. “Shall we go and see?”

He dropped the bottles, took my hand and pulled me out of the door. I felt redeemed.

It seemed odd that he’d come to be leading me through the place I had lived for the past two years, up in the direction of the surface. He needed me to get him through the gate, and then he ran ahead of me again in the direction of the noise. We were close to the desert side of the city here, and he scrambled up the rubble of the wall to look over the top. I hauled myself up behind him, squinting into the expanse of white even through my glasses. He pointed to the horizon, “Given size of the planet and the curvature of the horizon... that's what? Twenty kilometres away?”

For just a moment I remembered the light dancing on the city's massive lake, replaced now with the stark reflection from bleached earth. There was a grey shape moving over the plain. It would have to be huge, city sized, for him to have estimated that distance and I found it difficult to believe. I dug into my pack and pulled out the binoculars, passing them to him before I even thought to look myself.

He looked, and then turned to lie on his back and stare at the sky.

“What?” I asked.

“Look.” He handed me back the binoculars.

I poked my head above the rubble and resolved the focus. The image was fuzzy, and the battery-low light was flashing in the corner of the image because the sun filter drained it so fast. The range finder function struggled but eventually the image cleared. The ship, whatever it was, was flying low to the ground like an industrial combine, only with three times the wingspan. A flickering white beam pushed ahead of it into the ground. Behind it, a flurry of hooks and scoops dipped to ground level and up again. It looked and it behaved just like the combines I flew to raise money for college. 

“But there's nothing out there but scrub and dust.” I said, “What's it harvesting?”

“Soil,” he replied, “they're taking the soil.”

“They don't have their own, so they're stealing ours? What? I don't understand.”

“I met a man once who broke apart whole planets. Nasty piece of work; he had a psychotic parrot.”

“I don't understand,” I said again, as if saying it would exempt me from the need to exist in a world where soil was stolen and the Doctor was rambling about psychotic parrots.

He turned onto his side and looked at me, “I have to know if there's anything you haven't told me.”

“About what?”

“About you. About anything. Anything strange.”

I wanted to tell him what a stupid question that was but I couldn’t. What could I tell him? That my family thought I was mad? It hardly counted as strange, given I’d told them I could hear the voices in their heads. That I told my best friend at college I could feel things, and the next day I was forced to leave, because she had told everyone and they had laughed at me? That wasn’t strange, it was people being people. Should I tell him about those stupid fantasies, leaping into my head making me want to touch him? That I kept dreaming about the end of another world? A world I had never even set foot on.

The dreams were the one thing I had never understood.

“You mean about the dreams?”

“Dreams! Yes, tell me about the dreams.”

“I've had them since I can remember. They're just dreams.”

“You know that isn't true.”

Those five words vindicated me. It was almost with relief that I told him, “I'm standing on another world. The grass is red. The sky is burnt orange. Twin suns burn overhead, cooler than this. The trees are silver...”

I looked at him and he was breaking. His hand twitched slightly. “You can't know that. You can't.”

“The sky fills with death...there's nowhere to run. And I feel it...burning. I feel every moment; hear the screaming- I’m screaming- into the darkness.”

He got to his feet, “Stop it.”

His pain assaulted my senses and I stopped. He looked away, and I put words to my realization. “That's where you're from. The planet that burned. It was your home.”

“Oh Eve,” he said, “there's so much more to it than that. You don't understand.”

“Then tell me.”

He turned his back to me, “I can't.”

“Don't you think I have a right to know what's going on in my own head?”

He turned to face me again, “The human race is still generations away from stable telepathy. It's not even stable in you, not integrated properly into the genome. You’re beyond simply sensing things though, beyond random bits of information simply sneaking into your head. You shouldn't exist and yet you do; without tampering, without selective breeding, without anything....”

He banged his head against his hand and groaned, “Of course! How could I have been so stupid? They shouldn't have- nothing should have escaped - but apparently they did. Tiny particles of my home, spinning out into the universe. Finding their way here, to you. Which means if you absorbed enough radiation to change your genetic code, the planet must have been bombarded with ooooh - lots. Harmless, of course. Mostly harmless. So what do they want with a truck load of… oh, they can’t be. Tell me that’s not the case.”

“That's... not the case?” 

“But it has to be. Eve, they’re harvesting your planet to find the remains of mine.”

I looked at him blankly.

“They want control of time.”


	12. When it goes dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor has a plan

“Didn't I say it was all about time?” he asked, reaching down to help me stand. “I can only imagine Cobalt was under Time Agency orders to remove the anomaly and ended up trapped here himself.  When this is over I'm going to have to have words with someone about their methods.” 

My head was spinning, “I have to tell someone about that... harvester. I shouldn't think a city's going to slow it down much.” 

“Yes, you should.”

 “I'm at a bit of a loss who to tell. Can you stop it?”

 “Their power is solar,” the Doctor said, “which means if we turn the lights off, they’ll be at a bit of a disadvantage.”

 “Turn…the lights…off?”

 He pointed up at the blazing disc of the solar collector.

 “How?” I asked.

 “Agent Cobalt's Armageddon missile.”

 “Didn't you break it?”

 “A bit.  I can fix it again.”

 “He's not going to like it.”

 “It's going to be too late by the time it's done.”

 “What about your ship?”

 “Stopping that harvester is more important.”

 “What do you need?” 

“A technician.”

 Grant. “I'll get you one.”

 ***

 Grant was less than happy when  I just walked into his room without knocking; ignoring the limbs of whoever it was he’d been sleeping with, and the fact he was stark naked and lying mostly on top of the sheet.

 Mostly ignored, anyway.  

 “Put it away and get dressed,” I barked, “we've got a problem.”

 “ Eve? What? When did you turn into Jay?”

 “I mean it. There's a Jar ship on its way here and we have to stop it.”

 “What?”  

 “Huh, what, alien ship?” said a sleepy voice and a bleary eyed young woman poked her head out of the blankets. “Oh, hi, Eve.”

 “Hi, Emma. Please, Grant. The Doctor needs your help.”

 “The who, what?” Grant casually swung his legs over the side of the bed and slowly reached for his dressing gown.  When he finally looked up he noticed the Doctor standing in the doorway looking discreetly away, but still somehow waving in the right direction. Grant pulled the robe over his legs and looked at me pointedly, “You really aren't messing, are you, honey?”

 “You think it's the sort of thing I feel the need to joke about?”

 He gestured toward the Doctor, “He know what's going on?”

 “Yes.”

 “About time someone did,” Grant stood up and pulled the dressing gown closed. “Right then. What do we need to do?”

  When Grant had dressed and we were outside, I hurriedly explained that Cobalt sold us out, that there was a giant soil-stealing ship a few kilometres out, running on solar power and the Doctor had a plan to take out the orbital mirrors.  To his credit, he listened without interrupting.

 I finished up with: “Emma? Seriously?”

“Not at all seriously,” Grant said.  “So Doctor is it? Workshop’s this way.”

 That, unfortunately, left me the job of finding out if Cobalt was back yet.

 He had to still be gone. Walking out there, finding the ship, doing whatever he needed to with it, walking back...that had to be two hours, right there. And it's been what? Just over an hour since he left?

 It's really only been that long?

 When I reached his office though, the door was ajar. I told myself that it must be Jay, not Cobalt; but when I peered cautiously through the crack, I realised that it wasn’t Jay.

 “It’ll be much easier if you come in,” Cobalt said.

 I hesitated.

 “Oh, it's all right. I won't shoot you.”

 I entered, keeping my eyes on Cobalt. He was sliding the cover back onto the missile as he looked up.

 “You're very resourceful,” he said, “or rather, your new friend is. Where is he?”

 “He's looking for his ship,” I lied, “What did you do to it?”

 “It was of no use to me.”

 I tried not to speculate on what Cobalt would do to things he couldn’t use; or the consequences.

 “I know about the soil,” I said, “I know what they want it for and I know why you've been screwing with us. I've seen the harvester, but now, you're stuck here with the rest of us.”

 “Actually, I'm not,” he wandered to the desk, “I'm just about to leave.”

 “How? You said you needed the time-source to get home.”

 “I have a ship,” he shrugged. “You really think I'd build that,” he pointed at the missile, “if I didn't have a way to get away from here?”

 I wanted to smack him for that cocky-bastard statement, but he was too far away and I was too scared.

 “Okay, maybe I won't get far; it's not in the best of health. The next moon perhaps, but far enough away to not be here.” He carried on adjusting the missile. “I've been stuck in worse centuries.”

 I've been stuck in worse centuries? Who had the Doctor said Cobalt worked for? Time Agency. And, if there was a time-source in the Doctor's ship then the Doctor himself wasn’t only alien...

 “So, you're just going to leave us all to die?” I asked.

 “That was always the plan,” he said, finishing what he was doing and standing just out of reach. “That was what I was sent here to do; find out what threat this place posed and stop it by any means I had to. This is bigger than the Jars; there are other creatures, worse things that would do more damage to existence than you could possibly imagine.  Compared to that, Thrace is nothing. This place, your people, they're un-saveable. You know how to deal with the un-saveable, don't you, Eve?”

A knife in the right place is quick, finishing a job already started and beyond repair.

Is he right? Are we the same? I hit him, unaware of anything but anger and a sudden satisfaction as I landed a blow on that pretty face of his. He knocked me to the floor without hesitation and I spat blood into the dust. No, we are not the same.

Looking down, he smiled and operated something on his wrist. “Things I've seen; you'd be begging to die. Goodbye, Eve,” he said and faded into nothing.

Somewhere behind me the missile's arming process clicked to life.

***

The Doctor was talking to Grant in the workshop when I rushed in, breathless. Both of them looked at me, concerned. “Cobalt's just run for it and he's reactivated the missile.”

I didn’t stay long enough to check if they were following, but the Doctor overtook me in the corridor and spun himself into the room ahead of me. He pulled up in front of the missile and looked at the scrolling blue lights on the side. He frowned, standing on the other side of the device, and examined the cover for a long moment before sliding it off.

 **“** Oh. I see. He's bypassed the flight control and turned it into a bomb.” 

“You can stop it, right?” I ask. 

“Pass me that telemetry stabiliser.” 

Grant handed him something, “Anything else?”

 “Hold the secondaries out of the way,” the Doctor said, pointing into the casing, “right now, loosen the Hill array. Slow-ly.”

 “Doctor?” I asked again, as he and Grant worked.

 “I can't stop it,” the Doctor said and wiped his forehead with his hand.

 Can't? What? My heart sank. And that's it? Can't?

 “Genius,” he said, “remember? I can't stop it but I can deactivate the temporal payload making it just an ordinary missile. Like that! Ha!”

 He reached in again, pulling out a handful of wires. I couldn’t help but notice his hand was shaking as he did so.  He paused briefly to still the tremor.

 “And,” he continued, “I can reset the rocket guidance system. Grant, hard wire the mirror's position into the guidance system while I reroute this, like so...” he looked up from the missile. “Eve...?”

 “Yes?”

 “Please stop pacing.”

 I pressed my hands onto the desk behind me and forced myself to remain still until the Doctor slid the panel back into position.

“Right. Done. Granted, it's going to launch rather than detonate. And, it's going to explode on whatever it hits first.”

 The Doctor and Grant exchanged glances.

 Grant grabbed one end of the missile, the Doctor the other.

 “Just so you know,” said Grant. “If I see the slightest sign of the engines firing I'm dropping this and making a run for it.”

 The next thirty seconds were a slightly surreal haze of me running ahead of them and opening doors until we were outside, and of Grant hunting for something to stabilise the missile long enough to get it airborne. Then the Doctor pulled him out of the way by the collar, and all three of us were diving for cover behind a pile of rubble as it streaked skywards.

Six minutes later, it went dark.

Like turning off a light.

From the blinding and constant light of the previous five years to nothing at all, in an instant.  My heart beat painfully fast, a sudden spike of fear. I was shaking.

Although I could explain to myself what had just happened, tell myself that at three in the morning in the middle of autumn it should be dark; the sky shouldn't just go black like that.

Every sentient being on the continent, apart from the three of us, asked a single question; what just happened?

It went dark. Just like...

_The burnt orange sky turns black with smoke and the world smells of blood._

Far away, the low throb of the harvester faded to nothing. I stared into the emptiness.

_I cannot breathe, but I am still aware._

Terrified. Kneeling in the dust in the blackness, knowing what comes next, knowing what always comes next. I'm trying to wake up, I'm trying, but every time I think the image is gone, its back. I'm calling uselessly for help, but I have no voice and I can't wake up.

_I’m begging for it to end as fire burns the skin from my flesh and the flesh from my bones and I am still aware._

 Someone grabbed my arm and held me. “Eve,” I heard the Doctor say, “Eve. Look at me. You're dreaming. You're not there.”

 I'm not...

 From far away, I heard the sound of panic, because all of our power is solar too. The ground trembled, and I realised that even if the aliens had had backup, it hadn’t switched in time and the harvester must have crashed.

_I'm not there._

The Doctor looked at me. A shaft of diffuse light caught his eyes as long forgotten night batteries kicked in and the ground was suddenly covered with pools of silver and blue.

_I'm not there, but you are._

“There,” he said, patting my shoulder and helping me to my feet, “back with us. Brilliant. Now that's sorted we need to move on to the next problem.”

 Grant was leaning against a wall, looking up, “Stars,” he said, “I can see stars.”

 “Can't have you going all Asimov on me,” said the Doctor. “Yes, stars, very nice. I know it's been a while since you saw the rest of the universe, but first things first. We have to...” his voice broke off, for a moment. “We have to... Eve, what is it we have to do, again?”

 “Deal with the Jars?” I asked, “Doctor, are you okay?”

 “I'm fine, I'm absolutely...” he banged on the side of his head, “no, no, no, not now. There, all better. Now...”

 He took one step forward and collapsed on the ground.


	13. Voice in the dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somehow, they have to make it to the TARDIS.

I was hardly in a position to help myself, let alone him, but still I knelt down to take his hand. The Doctor’s pulse was weak, erratic and rapid. I slipped my hand under his head and dropped the other over the reopened injury on his side. When I drew my hand back, he winced in pain and my fingers were dark with blood.

 “I thought I had longer,” he said.

 “No,” I say, “no way do you give up now.”

 “Who said anything about giving up?” he asked, “All I need to do is get to the TARDIS. She's only lost in the city somewhere. Can't be that hard to find her.”

 He tried to get to his feet but failed miserably. I wasn’t sure I could support anything but my own weight. Still, I looped his arm over my shoulder.

 “Grant, help me.”

 He looked away from his stars.

 “Told you, girls can't carry,” he joked, catching my arm as I swayed sideways and nearly lost my footing.  He took most of the Doctor's weight and we lifted him between us.

 Grant moved to walk towards the building, but I stopped him, pointing into the city. “No. That way.”

 People were coming outside now, their minds full of questions and I couldn’t bear their stupid thoughts crowding into my head.

 “Eve, they're going to be going crazy in there. We have to tell them what's happening.”

 “Fine,” I said, shifting the Doctor back onto my shoulder, “you tell them. I'll manage.”

 I'd gone a few steps when Grant turned back to look at me, “Tell them what?”

 “I don't know, okay? I don't fucking know. Tell them their leader's betrayed them, their medic is a fraud, and the only thing she actually wants is for them to shut up and get out of her head. Tell them the man who's trying to save them isn't human at all. Tell them to do whatever it is they always planned to do on the day the world ended. Because if he...”

  _Dies._ I couldn’t bring myself to say it, afraid that saying it would make it truth. I took a long, stuttering breath.

 Grant kissed me on the forehead, “I'll tell them you'll be back.”

***

 

The city was eerie; spires of shattered glass, once blinding, now white and silver in the diffuse glow of the lights. I dragged the Doctor through the silence, jumping at unfamiliar echoes and afraid of new shadows, working from a half memory of a location I didn't even really know at all.

The first time he stumbled he muttered at me to keep going no matter what he said. 

“You stupid, ignorant, human,” were his next words, “I fucking hate your species. Half of the time I wonder if the reason I didn't let him wipe you out was just because he wanted to so much. You're just full of hurt, pain, and need; bleating at the universe to be nice to you while you destroy everything you touch! You can't help yourselves. You want it and you take it because you can't bear to think for one minute how pathetically fragile your tiny little lives are. How small and pointless. Just stop it, stop bothering me. I don't care. I really don't.”

“Right,” I said, “drop you and let you die here, yes?”

“Go ahead,” he said.

I didn’t.

The second time he tripped, he was shaking so violently I had to let him fall, protecting him as best I could. He was barely breathing and, in the low light, I could see traces of black mottling his fingers and staining his skin.  He lifted his hand and studied the markings.

 “Don't die,” I said, “we need you. When they get their power back we can't do anything against them.”

 “The instability is in the last stages. It's too late. There's nothing I can do.” I could tell he was trying to distance himself from it, but he couldn’t keep the fear from his voice. “All the years, all the memories in these old bones. Just so much dust.”

 This time, I had no anger to protect myself from the cold realisation he really was going to die, and there really wasn’t a thing I could do to stop it. I lay down next to him and rested my head against his chest. He wrapped his arm round my shoulder. At least he didn’t seem to be in pain anymore and I didn’t feel anything but a need to just...give in.

 “Oh, Eve. I'm so sorry,” he said, “you should go back to the others. If you're smart, you can still run. Keep holding out.”

 “For what?”

_Fear/protect/time/here/close_

 I lifted my head. “Did you hear that?”

 He sat up, light suddenly coming on in his eyes, “Yes!” He put both hands on my shoulders with a renewed strength.  “Up. Help me up.”

_Waiting/quiet/here_

 She was hidden in shadows; half a street away, set back against a wall. I could almost see past; my eyes slid off until I realised she was what I was looking for and suddenly, I wondered how I hadn’t seen her much earlier.

 The Doctor stepped forward; I threw my arm in front of him. “Cobalt was here. Remember?”

 He hesitated. Five years of occupation had taught me this if nothing else; I threw a handful of light dust into the air and, aided by the darkness Cobalt couldn’t have planned for, the laser trip wire became obvious enough to avoid.

 The Doctor collapsed forward onto the box. He rested his hands against the door, sliding one onto the frame above the word POLICE and coming away with a key.

 “Knew I'd be grateful for that spare,” he said, happily.

 He stepped inside and I followed. I couldn’t help but think this was going to be very cramped, until the sense of space hit me before I ever truly saw it.

  _Fuck._

 For a man at death's door (alien, I reminded myself, dear Gods, definitely alien) he strode up the ramp with a surprising vigour. Seeing me staring he reached back, his other hand resting among the dials and levers of the central console.

_It's huge!_

 “Welcome to the TARDIS, Eve,” he said, with a grin; activating some switch or other until the room flooded with light and a gentle, reassuring hum.

 Gods. My head hurts.

 My head hurts... less.

 He tried to turn with a flourish but he was still broken and he crashed to the deck plate as the central column started to move.

 “I've moved us back to your tunnels,” he said weakly, “I need to...” He arched his back off the floor, “I need to... restabilise, using the TARDIS’s energy as a template.”

“Okay,” I said, dumbly.

 His fingers brushed my hand, “I have to be alone for this.”

 I was confused and I didn’t want to leave him.

“I'll be fine. Really. Fine. You might not be if you stay.”

 The tone of his voice was enough to convince me I should go. I got slowly to my feet and headed towards the door.

 He started screaming as I reached the threshold but I forced myself to close the door behind me.

Once outside of his ship, I couldn’t find the energy to do anything but sit with my back against the door. I only half-focused on the fact that I was on the workshop mezzanine, some five kilometres and three minutes from where we first entered the ship. I was so tired; emotionally drained, physically exhausted. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew I should be doing something, but I couldn’t hold back the dawn, I couldn’t send the Jars away. All I could do was wait for the Doctor.

And that? It worries me how readily I accept it.

I couldn’t be bothered to move. I fell asleep right where I lay.


	14. Storm in the dust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The final confrontation with the Jars

I was woken by Grant – _fair’s fair,_ I suppose- who sat down next to me and handed me a bottle of water. It tasted of dust but I was grateful for the liquid anyway.

 “You look like shit, hon,” he said.

 “I feel like shit.”

 He looked at the TARDIS behind me. “Is that it?”

 “Yeah.”

 “It’s… compact.”

 “I don’t think you’d believe me if I told you.” _Although I think you’d love to see it._ That thought made me smile.

“Is he okay?”

 “I don’t know.”

 Grant took a long breath, “We’re in trouble Eve,” he said. “The sun came up half an hour ago, and there’s a Jar ship heading right for us. A big one.  Jay’s trying to organise some sort of fight.”

 “He'll get us all killed.”

 “I don't think he cares.”

 “Where is he?”

 “He’s in the hall.”

 I got to my feet, my thoughts racing.

 “Eve, what are you doing?”

 “I think I’m either going to help him or stop him,” I said.

 Every one of us had cause to hate them and hell, most of us would have happily gone out screaming death to the Jars. On the edge of my consciousness I heard people, running through every fantasy of violent revenge. It swept through me, finding the part of me that wanted to see every last filthy one of them burning. I wanted them dead and I didn’t care how it ended beyond that.

 Inside of me, some deeper need for survival wanted to buy us, and the Doctor, time.

 It wasn’t until we reached the hall I realised Grant was holding my hand and I knew what it was I was going to say.

 “Nobody fight them,” I said, surprised at how loud and clear my voice sounded. “Nobody do anything. Just…let them come.”

 “What the fuck are you doing?” asked Jay.

 “I'm trying to keep us alive,” I stood in front of him and rested my hand on the muzzle of his weapon, “put it down or we're all dead.”

 “They're going to kill us all anyway,” he said.

 “If they wanted to do that they'd have bombed us to oblivion and never set foot here.  They know we've got an edge now. They know we've got help.” I glanced back at the way I'd just come. I couldn’t hear either of them. _I hope we still do_.

 “You can't know that.”

 “Yes, I can. Put the gun down.”

 Grant put his hand on Jay's shoulder, “Dead later is better than dead now, mate,” he said.

 Jay slung the blaster over his shoulder, away from view. Around the hall, the others followed, letting whatever weapons they had found fall onto the floor. As I looked at them, it hurt to see this tiny group of survivors cowed again, backing up against the walls. It hurt to see them lose the last of their hope.  What was left of mine could be dead behind closed doors but I was keeping hold of it until the last possible moment.

 I heard the ship settling outside, watched fear in the eyes of the people in the hall as mottled shadows fell onto the marble floor. Three Jars stood in the entrance and behind them; numerous shapes warned they had not come unaccompanied.

 I was still clinging onto hope but burning with rage when I saw the first one of them walk into the hall. I hadn’t seen one this close since the morning Ben died, and it turned my stomach. My fingers were itching to tear, and smash, and shatter.

 “Who is the designated negotiator?” it buzzed.

 No one moved but several people looked in my direction.

 “You will provide a designated negotiator.”

 _I hope I can achieve something by this; something other than a quick death. I am not letting the past few days end in nothing._ I took a breath and stepped onto the floor, which is when the Doctor tapped my shoulder from out of nowhere. The rush of relief made me light-headed.

 “I think this is my job,” he said, as he walked into the middle of the floor.

 He was walking strongly now; back in the clothes he’d had when I found him, or at least an identical set. He briefly caught my eye and grinned before he turned back to face the alien patrol.

 “It's me you want to talk to,” he said.

 “What's he going to do?” Grant whispered.

 “Fuck knows,” I replied.

 “This resistance must cease. We will relocate the survivors to a safe location.”

 “Well, that's a generous offer,” the Doctor said, “very generous, I think, under the circumstances.”

 “You are negotiating sensibly.”

 The Doctor’s demeanour shifted. The smile faded and the jovial tone became quiet, clear and cold. It sent a shiver down my spine.  “I'm not negotiating. I'm not here to negotiate. I'm here to make you leave.”

 “You do not have the authority or the power to make us leave.”

 “You're using illegal weapons. They're ripping things from the vortex,” he said accusingly. “If the Time Agency were prepared to wipe out this entire planet to cover up its secret, what exactly do you think the Shadow Proclamation would do if they found you here with temporal missiles?”

“The Human Empire is not a member of the Shadow Proclamation at this time.”

“What's that got to do with it? It's still a protected era. Should I contact them and find out?”

Ripples of consternation moved through the Jars, one stepped forward next to the leader and whispered something to him before stepping back. 

“The Human Empire itself is not concerned by our presence here. The Shadow Proclamation will not intervene in a territorial dispute over one planet.”

The Doctor faltered for just a second, “Then I'm telling you to stop what you're doing and go home.”

“And which agency do you represent?”

“Agency? Oh, I'm my own agency.  I represent the people that make up the dust you've been ripping up from the ground here.”

The impact of that sank in, not so much for us, but the Jars seemed disturbed by it. 

“Oh, so you did do a little bit of research. Didn't just find traces of energy in the soil here and think ‘oh, we're having ourselves a bit of that’. You know exactly what it is you're trying to turn into a weapon.” He paused for a moment. “No, it’s not just a weapon, is it?”

 “Correct. We have little interest in warfare, our primary purpose is propagation.”

 “Propagation? What do you need time-travel for? There’s a thousand bare rock worlds you could colonise.”

 “We seek to implant ourselves into an earlier time.”

 “Ahhh, I see. Build an empire before anyone else has the chance ensure yourselves superiority over any subsequent race? Now, where have I heard that before? I’m sorry, but I can’t let you do that.”

 “You are just one man.”

 “Time Lord,” he corrected, “just one Time Lord. One very angry Time Lord. And do you know what I do when I'm very angry?”

 Silence from the Jars, but there was fear there too.

 “I become the storm,” the Doctor hissed, “the storm that destroys planets and annihilates species. The storm that will not hear your cries for mercy. ”

 “Is that true?” Grant whispered.

 “It’s true,” I said, even if it was only in that moment I’d realised it.

 “One chance,” the Doctor said, “leave now.”

 The Jars looked down into the dust and stepped backwards, conferring rapidly in buzzing, frantic voices. “We will withdraw.”

 “You have until nightfall,” the Doctor replied, “and trust me, I'll be watching.”

 The Doctor stood motionless, waiting until they had left the hall before turning to look at me. Around us, it was finally sinking in what had just happened; it seemed everyone was there, all at once.

  _They're leaving._

 _They're finally leaving_.

The Doctor was dragged into the middle of the crowd, grinning like a man who hadn’t just threatened to destroy an entire race.  There was clapping and smiling and tears and shock. It was too loud and it made my head hurt. Grant dragged me into a hug but I pushed him away. There are too many people. Too many people pressed too close.

 Stillness in the movement, despite his smile, the Doctor’s mind is a note of sadness in the chaos.


	15. Epilogue

It was hard to adjust to the darkness, standing there above ground and watching the sun set as the last of the carriers lifted off into the atmosphere. I heard the Doctor approach, but I continued looking at the sunset because it was too beautiful not to.

 “I got them to put most of it back but it's made a real mess of the ecosystem,” he said. “It's going to take a long time to make Thrace work again. I've configured the communications system so you can get messages back to the Empire.”

 “You think they'll actually come?”

 His silence on that was telling enough. He moved until he was standing close behind me.

_He’s standing behind me, his arms sliding round my waist and I feel a gentle kiss on my shoulder._

 “This is where I kiss you, isn't it?” he asked quietly.

_He knows? Of course he knows._

 And if he knew that, then he knew all the other flashes of possibility I’d tried to keep secured in my head. I wanted to die of embarrassment. Although I knew there was no chance, hadn’t even really wanted there to be one, my brain tortured me by hanging on to a last shred of anticipation. So I didn’t turn round. “I'm sorry,” I said, “I’d hoped you hadn’t seen that. You were never supposed to. I was trying to keep it inside but I guess it leaked out in the craziness.” 

“It’s all right,” he said, “it's not your fault.  Just your DNA, shaped by those tiny particles of my home that changed you, calling out for something it recognised.”

 “How very…scientific.”

 “You couldn’t have known. I should have.”

 “Would it have made a difference either way?”

 “No,” he put his hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him, “I'm sorry Eve. I'm sorry that I can't.”

 “I know.”

 “You could still come with me.”

 He’s just as lonely as I am. Probably more so. _He destroys planets and saves worlds. I’m an accident of genetics. We’re not what the other needs._ I shook my head. “I belong here.”

 He nodded, “You’re probably right, but I owe you a ‘thank you’, all the same.” 

 He pressed cool fingers to the side of my head and gently brushed the edge of my mind. I tried not to, but I trembled at his touch. Then the world that constantly echoed in my head grew silent, and I looked up at him, half terrified.

 “There, I've just turned the volume down a little. You should find it easier to control now, learn to use it properly without resorting to madness or drugs. Go on. Try it.”

 I tested the new walls. He was just on the other side, giving the mental equivalent of thumbs up. Behind that, I found just a whisper of his sadness and pain. I put out my hand, my instinct was to try and soothe, but he caught it and lowered it to my side.

 “Don't,” he said, “it's not yours to deal with.”

 I took a long breath and smiled sadly, “No.”

 “I really should be leaving,” he said, “but there's a party going on downstairs. You should go; you're quite the hero now and they’re wondering where you’ve got to.” He paused, “particularly that engineer friend of yours. You know, I'll never understand how in the most desperate of circumstances human beings always find a stash of alcohol.”

“Just instinct, I guess.” I smiled, and he placed a soft, affectionate kiss on my cheek.

 “Thank you.” 

With that he turned to leave. I called to him, and he paused on the threshold.

 “Your memories scare me. But I know what it's like, constantly fighting yourself. If you ever want to stop; just for a moment, when you need to, I will be here.”

 He lingered silently just long enough to let me know he'd thought about it, and then he was gone.

 I turned back to look at the failing light on the horizon, and listened to the sounds of happy people outside. It sounded strange, both the happiness and the quietness at the edge of my thoughts.

 _Sure, it isn't going to last, but what the hell. It’s been a long time since I went to a party_.

 I grabbed my jacket and headed downstairs.


End file.
